in laymans terms would you care to share some things you've done, how they've been done, time taken etc
Here's the basics of what we did:
We began as a youngish team of 3, our ideas stem from problems we had getting certain information, knew we could do it better and motivation at the start was NOT to make money at all. Looked at how content was utilised and knew the more pages we had, the more each one will be searched. This shaped what the company is eg: big engines that offer content.
We knew general search was big - but was too crowded and how motivated will we still be after a few years trying to beat AOL, G, Yahoo etc - wasn't going to happen so needed an edge and found it.
We went free for about 3 years, but gave away far too much for free, so went paid in 08 - but our model (like others) was built on the freebie giveaway, which worked quite well, and we like giving away free stuff, actually giving 500k worth of free links..... trouble is this don't pay the bills you know... but can survive with 1 engine using a partial paid model so its cool. Basically, the freebie method worked very well, getting us 1'695 sign-ups so suggest more sites do this as it truly works, and wouldnt say it if it didn't.
Trouble is, the freebie option brings hassles too and the hassle might have been too much for the gain - but it does work, and can't praise it enough -
IF you get the free element right. I think we got it partially right, but other elements didn't work as we hoped, and would loved to have kept it free for another 2 years, but spam was harsh and that ruined it for the rest. We wanted pure niche companies, as was the whole point of the site.
Our target was 25'000 advertisers, working off the PR and links accumulated - but ended up with 2000 sign-ups, with maybe 300 paying.
2002 - Acquired directory and database, left sitting while wondering how to use it. Over 3000 businesses and content available to us - boosted our content to 5000 companies.
Links continued to increase to 43'000 mixed bag of low ranked to on-target links. Site not what we wanted to build - made biggest mistake of career by changing estblished domain name in error, lost nearly most links, left with about 2000 when switched to new domain.
Year 2 (2006), 636'000 visitors hit the site, maybe about 50% bookmarked month on month, which helped with traffic flow. Continued to allow free sign-ups to build the content up, in 2007 built 2nd directory, merged the 2 increasing content to 6000ish. Site NOT SEO'd at this point.
Year 3 (2007), traffic hits 3000 per month, bookmarks increased.
Year 4 (2008) Major press interest, some paid releases in niche magazines.
Year 5 (2009/10) More press stuff 22 other local press mentions - on the back of our Regional Finalist position for Innovation. Launched marketing forum, built upto 2000 posts, forum currently offline due to work load.
Year 6 - 2010, first internet award win, 2nd feature story in local press. 2nd Regional Final spot - more local press.
National finalist spot for category of Virtual Business of the Year.
began blogging a bit more,
adding some SEO articles but mostly concentrating on our achivements and
adding services to bolster our offering at no extra charge.
Year 7 - 2011, between 09 & 11, traffic delivered per client to 300 visitors on average. Page requests to 12.5 million, visitors delivered to 2 million. Delivered 800 visitors to one client within 12 months.
2010 - expanded company with 2nd search engine, giving away 520'000 links. Engine gets local press coverage in 22 papers.
This was done on practically zero ad spend and minimal SEO input. Basically we used the media and content building to do this.
